Category Archive

The Greater Washington DC Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-DC) is holding a panel discussion on Tuesday, May 10 from 3:30 – 5:00 pm US EDT (UTC-4). Panelists will discuss the different types of Internet fragmentation, their associated technical, economic, and political impacts and when fragmentation may be desirable or problematic. Additionally, the panelists will examine how these should be taken into consideration in policy making.

The kinds of questions the panel are hoping to explore include:

Is the global, open Internet moving away from a network of networks that is universally interoperable to a series of networks fragmented along policy, technical or economic lines?

What about the increasing use of DNS and content filtering?

As some governments pass laws related to data localization and restriction of cross-border data flows, what will the impact be?

What other factors have the potential for causing fragmentation?

A Live video stream is to be recorded and made available for viewing after the event.

Lawrence Strickling the Assistant Secretary for Communications and Information and NTIA Administrator is urging all parties with an interest in the IANA transition to review the proposals to transition IANA functions away from US Control and provide feedback to the working groups.

This is the best way to make your voice heard and make a difference. It is particularly important that stakeholders everywhere evaluate whether these plans meet the criteria that we have said must be part of the transition.

In recent days both the IANA Stewardship Transition Coordination Group (ICG) and the Cross Community Working Group (CCWG) on Enhancing ICANN Accountability have posted their proposals for review and final public comment. Comments are due September 8, 2015, for the ICG’s proposal and September 12, 2015, for the CCWG’s proposal.

The National Telecommunications & Information Administration has announced today its intent to transition ICANN Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community.

To support and enhance the multistakeholder model of Internet policymaking and governance, the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) today announces its intent to transition key Internet domain name functions to the global multistakeholder community. As the first step, NTIA is asking the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to convene global stakeholders to develop a proposal to transition the current role played by NTIA in the coordination of the Internet’s domain name system (DNS).

“The timing is right to start the transition process,” said Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information Lawrence E. Strickling. “We look forward to ICANN convening stakeholders across the global Internet community to craft an appropriate transition plan.

All the tests performed in this study indicate that the introduction of DNAME records as a means of creating isomorphic TLDs does not prevent name resolution using software in common use today.

The observed behaviour of DNS servers varies in the handling of the DNAME record and the caching properties of the synthesised CNAMEs but this does not affect the outcome of the resolution process.

Differences in caching behaviour may generate different load profiles in the DNS servers but do not prevent resolution completion.

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Finally, while hard to quantify without well known query patterns for the potential new TLDs (popularity, etc) the introduction of DNAME in the root zone is highly unlikely to generate any significant impact in the load of root servers.

Peter Dengate Thrush is to take over from Vint Cerf as the new chairman of the ICANN board. Vint Cerf is leaving because of Term limits, having first been elected to the position in 2000.

Vint Cerf said before stepping down.

“To those who now guide its path into the future comes the challenge to fashion an enduring institution on this solid foundation,I am confident that this goal is not only attainable, it is now also necessary. The opportunity is there: Make it so.”

Under Vint Cerf’s tenure ICANN has grown from around 12 staff members in 2001 to around 100 staff members and a $41.6 million budget for the coming year.

Vint’s inclusiveness, vision and understanding of not only the technical issues but also the nature of both individual and business interests will be a exceptionally hard act to surpass.